Cruz Denies Vision Statement, Admits Lies

Almost 16 years to the day that he was first approached by DuPage County sheriff's detectives investigating the slaying of Jeanine Nicarico, Rolando Cruz took the witness stand Wednesday and, for the first time in court, repeatedly denied he made a dream or vision statement implicating himself in the crime.

"I never mentioned anything about a dream or vision," Cruz said, his voice firm and even. "I never told them that, never."

In a moment of high drama, a nervous Cruz, clad in a light blue long-sleeved shirt and muted gray and blue striped necktie, tentatively approached the witness stand shortly before 3 p.m.

Cruz, a man who says he once told nothing but lies to authorities, raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth, then took a seat 15 feet from the three former prosecutors and four DuPage sheriff's police officers who are on trial on charges that they railroaded him to Death Row for Jeanine's death, which remains unsolved.

After nearly two hours of tense testimony, the trial was recessed for the day. Defense attorneys immediately contended Cruz, 35, had perjured himself and reiterated that they were eager to cross-examine him.

In 1985, Cruz was convicted of murdering the 10-year-old Naperville Township girl, in part because two of the DuPage 7 defendants, sheriff's detectives Thomas Vosburgh and Dennis Kurzawa, testified that he had told them of having a dream about the crime that contained details only the killer or someone who was there would know. Cruz was sentenced to death. That conviction was later overturned. He was convicted again following a second trial and sentenced to death once more.

But after the second conviction was set aside, he was tried a third time and acquitted by a judge who suggested the prosecution was corrupt.

The judge's statements prompted a grand jury investigation that resulted in the conspiracy and obstruction of justice indictments of Vosburgh, Kurzawa, two other sheriff's police officers--Lieutenants Robert Winkler and James Montesano--and three former prosecutors of Cruz, Thomas Knight, Robert Kilander and Patrick King.

On Wednesday, special prosecutor William Kunkle Jr. began questioning Cruz slowly, asking Cruz to describe growing up in Aurora, how his parents divorced when he was in junior high school and how he attended five high schools before dropping out to join the Army Reserves.

Less than four minutes after taking the stand, Cruz became emotional, fighting for composure as he recalled the deaths of his grandmother and his cousin.

"Try to keep your voice up," Kunkle said. "I know some of this is hard but--"

"Nothing about this is hard, your honor," snapped defense lawyer Terence Gillespie from his chair.

Composing himself, Cruz told of the death of his cousin--a death, he said, police provoked.

While smoking cigarettes with his cousin under a bridge over the Fox River in Aurora as teenagers, Cruz said, police sneaked up on them and surprised them. His cousin tried to flee, but fell into the river and drowned, Cruz said.

That experience, he said, was a central motivation for his hatred of police and why he told them lies.

Led by Kunkle, Cruz testified that Vosburgh and Kurzawa first approached him on April 19, 1983, to ask about the Feb. 25, 1983, abduction and slaying of Jeanine and how, repeatedly, over the next three weeks, he spun a web of lies that implicated three other men--Emilio Donatlan, Ray Ortega and Alejandro Hernandez.

And, Cruz testified, the detectives knew his account was a fraud.

"I said it's all lies, it's all lies," Cruz said of his conversation with Vosburgh on May 9, 1983. Vosburgh, Cruz testified, responded, " `No, no, no. Just keep telling me.' That's all he kept saying."

Cruz testified that he talked several times with the detectives, and on at least one occasion, Kurzawa and Vosburgh bought quarts of beer, which all three men drank in the police car as they chatted.

The charade, Cruz said, reached a crescendo on the night of May 9, 1983, when he called the detectives to say he had been shot at by one of the men he was implicating. Vosburgh picked him up and drove him to the DuPage sheriff's police offices.

En route, according to Vosburgh's account, Cruz said he dreamed about the crime.

On the witness stand, Cruz gave a different account of that car ride with Vosburgh.

"He asked me, `What's the matter?' or something to that effect," Cruz testified. "And then I told him, I was telling him some lie, then he was--he would, like, tell me something about what was wrong and I told him that--I said, `Well, you know, it's all lies.'